


This Doesn't Look That Much Different From Home

by theskywasblue



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dreams, Introspection, M/M, Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 09:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Limbo is like a post-apocalyptic Rockwell painting</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Doesn't Look That Much Different From Home

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [](http://springkink.livejournal.com/profile)[**springkink**](http://springkink.livejournal.com/) prompt: May 14th - Trapped/stranded together - _In limbo, the ocean..._

They spill out of the ocean like shipwreck survivors, coughing salt water out of their lungs and rubbing at their raw eyes. Arthur kneels in the sand with his hair hanging into his eyes and listens to the sound of the ocean crashing against the rocks without thinking clearly that this is it – they’ve reached the end of the world.

“Well,” Eames says, his voice is salt-raw and there’s dark sand caught in the stubble of his beard, “I guess that didn’t work.”

“We had to try,” Arthur’s voice seems small against the roar of the water; the surf is so choppy that it’s kicking up foam against the rocks and sand. “What other choice did we have?”

***

They spend their first few hours sitting on the beach, just trying to think while the sun plays peek-a-boo between the clouds. A few restless gulls circle, a crab dances through the sand, diverting its path around Eames’ shoe. All along the shoreline, on the other side of the rocky hillside that cages in the beach, there are skyscrapers crumbling into dust and the ocean is cutting pathways up through the possibly endless cityscape that lies beyond.

When their clothes are dry, they walk up the beach and into the city, where bridges span long stretches of cold water, and famous landmarks exist side by side with places that Arthur remembers from pictures of Mal’s childhood.

It’s almost like a post-apocalyptic Rockwell painting.

There’s a certain temptation to level the whole place and start over – after all, it’s their limbo now, but every time that Arthur recognizes a tiny trace of Mal tucked into the foundations of a particularly artful construction, or a shadow of Dom in the way that two bridges interlock, he can’t bring himself to do it. Those little postcard-traces are all they’re going to have now that they’re alone.

***

It’s Eames who first tries to change something. The places that Dom and Mal built are all going slowly to dust, and the sound of the ever-present ocean comes in through every cracked wall and broken window.

Of course Eames, being something of a ridiculous snob when it comes to his living accommodations, so long as no money actually has to come out of _his_ pocket, builds them the fucking Ritz-Carlton, right up out of the ocean, from memory. Arthur can only stand and watch it rise up out of the water like a plant reaching for the sun.

Arthur is fairly certain, however, that the Ritz doesn’t have the London Botanical Gardens in the lobby.

Eames just shrugs. “What’s the fun of dreaming forever if you can’t play fast and loose with reality once and a while?”

***

They both give up cutting their hair. Eames’ becomes a loose, golden mop that he has trouble keeping out of his eyes; Arthur keeps his pushed back as much as he can, but it curls at the base of his neck. He also neglects to shave for several days, until Eames comments on the dark scruff that covers his face.

“It’s very becoming.” They’re eating at Arthur’s favourite restaurant, which is now perched on a concrete island between the house where Arthur grew up and Eames’ favourite casino in Mombasa, where Eames has given up winning all the time because that takes the sport out of it. “It makes you look...”

“Don’t say sophisticated,” Arthur warns, “if you say sophisticated, I’m going to kick you under the table.”

Eames laughs, “Actually, you look a bit like a homeless drifter, darling. But that’s a good look on you.”

Arthur throws a forkful of crepe at Eames’ head; Eames assaults him with a cube of good cheese. They spill the wine and overturn the table when Arthur gets Eames in a rather bastardized version of a wrestling hold he learned in high school.

The skin at the back of Eames’ neck still smells of the ocean when Arthur pins him to the floor and holds him there until Eames says, “Uncle.”

***

Eames, though an expert forger, has a limited talent for architecture. He can manage well enough with a maze designed by someone else, but when left to his own devices, his edges are always fuzzy, his details imperfect.

For imagination, however, he’s almost unrivalled.

“No, no!” Arthur laughs, grabbing at Eames’ hands. There is sand under both their fingernails, and worked so permanently into Arthur’s scalp that he’s stopped scratching at it except when he has nothing better to do. “Are you kidding me, you can’t build it like that – it’s ridiculous.”

Eames shields the pile of wooden blocks with his hands – they have letters of the alphabet painted on the sides in bright primary colours, and maybe they belonged to James, once, or to some projection of him. “Are you trying to tell me I can’t build what I want?”

“There’s a line between architecture and Jenga, Eames.”

They struggle – cursing, swatting, fingernails scraping – and it’s Eames’ careless elbow that causes the blocks to tumble, spilling across the carpeted floor. Beyond the window, a building – half realized, with Lovecraftian proportions and a Pisa-like tilt – crumbles in sections and crashes into the street below. They hold their breaths, guiltily, at the thunderous resonance of destruction; and for a long time afterwards their imaginary cityscape is darkened by a cloud of dust.

***

Some mornings, Arthur wakes up with his nose pressed against the soft skin at the back of Eames’ neck and it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done just to remind himself that he didn’t always live in a world that he could pull apart and put back together with a thought – he has to remind himself that limbo, no matter how they cling to it, is never stable.

The ocean is always eating away at the edges of the world, and if Arthur thinks about it too hard, he can feel the beginnings of insanity lodged in his brain, like a grain of sand inside an oyster shell, growing into a pearl. He clings to the memory of wrongness, of the line between dream and reality, watching his die roll over and over again across the hardwood floor of their living room, while Eames sleeps on the couch and old French jazz pipes through the radio speakers; but the knowledge of the dream almost makes it worse.

Sometimes he just freezes, watching Eames at the kitchen sink, or across the table while they play a game of checkers or cards, and thinks _are you real? Am I?_ and feels like the threads of him are being pulled apart, like he's being unwoven, that the world is a tapestry with frayed edges and everything's falling into the sea.

***

One day, as they're walking along the beach, Arthur drops suddenly down into the sand and starts taking off his shoes.

"Arthur...what are you doing?"

"I'm swimming," Arthur responds. His socks go next, tossed as carelessly as rags. Arthur doesn't relish the idea of going into the grey surf in nothing but his boxer-briefs, so he leaves his pants on, starts emptying the pockets in handfuls. "I'm getting out of here."

Eames looks towards the shoreline, and Arthur knows what he's seeing – the water so deep and churned up that it's like a black and white photo of the sea, with the rocks (Arthur's pretty sure now that they were once buildings, now worn down to almost nothing) jutting up like a monster's teeth – and says, "You're mad."

"I will be if I stay here," he stands now, peels his shirt off and tosses it to the sand, where it falls like a discarded skin. He thinks he understands what Mal felt now, the terror of dreaming forever; it's like the moment as you're just falling asleep, when your body feels weightless, un-tethered – and you jolt awake, like a kick – except this one never ends. “There has to be a way out of here.”

There's part of him that's afraid to die, afraid of the possibility that he might just go deeper and deeper, and never come up again - but he's never been afraid to try and he's not about to start now.

“And you think that’s it?” Eames gestures to the churning water, and he doesn’t seem all that perturbed when Arthur nods. Arthur is the point man, and Eames has followed him into worse situations, trusting his life to the things Arthur knows.

“Alright,” he says at last, kicking off his own shoes, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt.

They stand at the edge of the water, with the cold salt spray slicking their bare chests and faces. Eames turns to him and says, “Well, darling, after you.”

Arthur leans over and kisses him, just once, soundly on the mouth; he tastes like the ocean.

And then they dive in, together.

-End-


End file.
